


bite the hand

by inkspl0tches



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 02:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspl0tches/pseuds/inkspl0tches
Summary: There is death, she thinks. And then there is Jaime.--pre-the (not really that) long night. nothing after 8x03 is real.





	bite the hand

_But you want what I can't give to you_  
_Your hands are gravity while my hands are tied_  


-   


It is not that he scares her but rather that she is, in some way, afraid of him.

She hasn't always recognized it for what it is. Because she can remember the last time she had been truly afraid. Can remember the earth and iron of blood and dirt in her mouth. The unsettling quiet of the Hound's body in empty air. Or before that. When fear was animal, when it was the bear's hot breath on the sting of her neck. The dust in her eyes when he'd dropped down and hit the ground in front of her. When she'd thought, _No, it couldn't be_. And, _Of course, of course it is_ at the same time.

It isn't always like that with him. It is bone-deep, rather. Something subtle and bruised. Like fever or chill or a quiet rot. It will kill her, but slower.

It doesn't really matter now. It likely never did. Because there is fear and there is iron and dirt and there is breath and sweat and dust and ivory and then there is--there is a fucking war going on. There are boys to train and there is not enough food and there are plans to go over and Pod to watch for, always, out of the corner of her eye.

And then, still or despite or because of it all, there is the brutal surprise of him. The low impact of his unexpected appearance that nearly sends her over double because she did, she thinks, expect it after all. And _how dare she_ expect anything of him when he has never--

She knows what it means to break an oath, theoretically. She knows the shame and the dishonor of it. The red kind of pain it would bring her. What she does not--what she has never wanted--to know is what it means to make an oath in silence. She thinks it might be worse than breaking the thing. To imagine one. To conjure it up like a shadow. To think _No, it couldn't be_ and _Of course, of course it is_ at the same time.  
  
It is quiet rot. It is dangerous.

But it doesn't really matter now because there are two sides to this, there always are. When they had gone to the Dragonpit, the Queen had watched her for a long time with the same cool disinterest she’d turned toward the wight. Like she had invented something harder and more secret than fear.

It is not that she could ever envy her, it is just that she wishes her eyes were green. Wishes she could hide everything a little better, or at least with less effort. There are two sides to this. This is what she thinks, in the Great Hall of Winterfell with the Dragon Queen and Sansa watching.

There is death, she thinks. And then there is Jaime.  


-  


Winter has not yet come in full. But it crouches. It pants over Winterfell, heavy against its neck.

Jaime’s breath freezes when he asks to serve under her. “It would be my honor.” She balances again on the thin blade of unsurprise. For a moment, she thinks she will say no. “No, I don’t think that would be best, Ser Jaime.” She is tempted--just to see a little crack of shock across his face--but he is looking at her as if from very far away, as if he cannot fathom he will ever be close enough to see her clearly, and so she blinks instead and turns to make him look away.

She isn’t stupid. He fights backward now and she knows that that means. If he is even half as good as he was before, it would be a miracle. Of course, she could put him at her left, where he could do the most damage and himself the least harm. But she isn’t stupid. She knows what it all means. His far off look. The crouch of winter and the Queen far, far away, all alone in King’s Landing.

In a way, he has been trying to die with her since they met. “No,” she had told him then. “You must live.”

At least this time, he is asking her permission. _May I, my lady?_ This time, he is asking her to give him something, she who has so little to give. It is what Sansa had asked too, without asking: _You would fight beside him? You would fall beside him?_

And she knows what she will tell him, what she will tell them all. _Alright. Alright, yes._

 _I would._  


-  


It isn’t as though she hasn’t thought about it before. Around the firepit, on the way to Harrenhal, she mostly had not wanted him to leave her all alone. But other times, perhaps, tied together so tight it burned, the heat of his hand between them. She’d thought: It could be a little like escaping.

Or in the baths, later, with the heavy hot weight of him in her arms. How she had thought, almost flatly, This is how he would look if he was dead. The pale starkness of her skin against the grey and green of the water where he fell, against the ash on his cheek. She’d hoped they would clean him up, if he really did die here. Such an ignoble death, for the Golden Lion, for the Kingslayer, for Jaime.

She remembers how she had called then for help, and how, for a still moment, while she breathed and breathed with him, no one had come.  


-  


When she was a child, Tarth was wide and green.

Until she was eleven, there were fields with grasses taller than she was. If she would kneel, bend her head to study the ground or her bruised knees, the tips of the long stalks would brush over her light hair, her collar, her shoulders. She had known the steps even then. To be brave, to be just, to defend the innocent.

She had pictured it differently, but it feels almost the same. The careful swipe of Jaime’s sword over her shoulders is soft but not without intent. When he touches her, he means it.

And when she stands, he is looking at her like he had before, but differently. Closer, somehow.  
  
It is almost the same as when she was child, but she had not known how clean it would feel. How heavy it would seem, what he had given her. How tight it would be in her chest. How close it would all run to love.  


-  


His arm had rotted before the rest of him was ready. Stopped against a cold press of a stream, they’d let her look it over. She’d been sure there was some kind of sickness in it, deep in the jagged edge of bone.

She’d tried regardless, with water from the stream and a new strip of ripped cloth, to clean it. Their little edge of the moving water turned pink with not-quite-dry blood.

Jaime had coughed, blinked red eyes. He’d said, roughly, low, “Thank you.”

She had said, “It’s _nothing_ ,” because it was. Because she was not going to be able to _get at it_ , whatever slow thing was killing him from the inside, from wrist to ribs.

She had moved her cupped hands over him, again and again, until the water ran clear.  


-  


The fire goes a deep red as it burns low, and she knows she has stayed far longer than she intended. Ser Davos and the Wilding have gone to bed, or to get drunk in a less crowded corner with a brighter fire, and it is she and Pod and the Lannister brothers and Pod looks between the two of them, the three of them, with something just to the left of delight.

She isn’t listening. They converse around her in low tones but it feels quieter than any place she has been before. And for as low as it is, the fire is warm and the light is gold. You could almost forget there was a war on. You could almost forget the night would not end in morning.

“What about you?” Jaime asks suddenly, turning to her just slightly. And she realizes she hadn’t heard him speak in a long time--that she had been listening for his voice. She wonders if he is teasing her, to even the score from before, if she is walking into a joke that began while she had watched the fire. But when she glances at Pod he is looking at her with bright eyes and Tyrion doesn’t laugh and when she looks at Jaime she-- _oh_. When she looks at Jaime, she knows he is sincere.

He swallows. He says, “What will you do after the world ends, Ser Brienne?”  


-  


The morning, when it comes, is black. The constancy of the sunrise is not something she had ever considered until it fails to come. It feels all adrift, after that, like they have all been untethered somehow from a last, most precious mooring. They float and blink together and hope not to drown.  


-  


Still. There is always Jaime. They move together and do not need to speak and it matters less, somehow, that the sun has not risen every time his matched sword comes down beside hers.

When she loses him, it is only once and for long minutes. Her arm burns and when she turns, twisting hard to wrench her weapon from stiff and brittle bone, he is nowhere to be found. She looks to her left, again and again, less afraid at each glance that she will not see him and more afraid of what it will do to her to have to put the beautiful sword he’d given her between his beautiful eyes if the Night King turns them blue.

But then he is behind and beside her, suddenly, and she realizes he had not gone anywhere at all. That while she had been looking for him at her left, he had come around her back without ever leaving her.

She shouts at him when he looks at her, his eyes still dark in the lack of light, somehow entirely furious in her relief, red with anger and blood. “This _whole time_?”

“Yes.” He cannot possibly know what she means. “ _Yes_.”  


-  


Tyrion had said: _I think we might live._  


-  


Lady Sansa had told her about the walls of Winterfell. How the water from the springs runs through them like blood through men. After it is all over, she slips down the nearest wall, armored spine to warm stone, and wonders which part of the fortress’ careful, guarded body this is.

Next to her, still, is Jaime. He falls when she does, but it is different than how she had thought it would be. It is not death at all. It is the weariness that comes after. The weight of her armor on her shoulders and the relief of the ground.

There is death, of course, she had known there would be. There is so much death. But there is also the living heart of Winterfell, its rushing, rushing veins. And there is Jaime.

Jaime, who reaches out slowly without asking and takes her hand in his, his cracked knuckles on the hot stone of the ground and his thumb over hers. Jaime, who says her name and nothing else. Jaime, who is warmer than the heart of the castle and so much more alive.

There is death. And _then_.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> UH hello! i don't go here and my familiarity with the source material is um. not excellent so i apologize for that and hope u will go easy on me. but 8x02 Awakened Something in Me and i very very much enjoyed writing what is both my First and almost certainly Last jaime x brienne fic. 
> 
> thank you for letting me borrow them for a while! title and first quote from bite the hand.mp3 by boygenius


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